Re: [lojban] baby words, but general relevance: dai-like cmavo

[Craig Daniel <craigbdaniel@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Michael Turniansky
<mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
>   We seem to be in agreement here.  Who  wants in "au se'inai"?  *I* do.
> What's the reason for my want?  Someone else.  Who complains in "oi
> se'inai"?  I do.  What's the reason for my complaint?  Someone else. Hence,
> "That fall you took hurt me!"  Whereas "oi dai" to me only conveys "I see
> that YOU hurt".

No, oidai expresses a feeling on the part of the speaker. That feeling
is one of empathetic pain, and implies that the speaker feels pain on
behalf of the listener (whether or not the listener actually feels any
pain).

This is important, because the UI (other than xu) are strangely
non-declarative. There is a crucial difference between ".ui" and "mi
gleki". You might be lying about how you feel, so "mi gleki" is simply
false; ".ui" has no truth value, ever. It cannot be affirmed, obeyed,
or answered, as it is not semantically declarative, imperative, or
interrogative. Since I can very readily be mistaken about how you
feel, saying ".oi" on your behalf makes no sense - it's expressing
something that I have no way of knowing even exists, without allowing
you to dispute it. An empathetic feeling, on the other hand, is no
less real just because the person being empathized with feels
differently; that's the kind of feeling ".oidai" expresses.

Thus, we have the following options:

.ui = I express happiness
.uidai = I express a feeling of empathy with your probable happiness
connected with a perception that you may be happy (that is, my
happiness is empathetic, but whether you're actually happy or not
doesn't change the validity of my .uidai)
.uidainai* = I express happiness, and I'm not empathizing with you
(that is, I probably don't think you're happy, but whether you are or
not has no direct relevance)
.uinai = I express lack-of-happiness
.uinaidai = I express empathy with your apparent lack-of-hapiness (so
this does imply, pragmatically, that I believe you're not happy, but
again, my feeling of empathy doesn't actually depend on what you are
actually feeling because my UI are not allowed to be wrong)
.uinaidainai* = I express lack of happiness, and am not empathizing
with you in this regard (that is, I'm unhappy despite the fact that
you're probably not)

*there's another proposal for how dainai works that I find a little
less intuitive and perhaps a touch less lobykai but also a little more
useful, in which the meanings of .oidainai and .oinaidainai are
inverted. I picked one for the sake of this explanation.

None of these assert how the listener is feeling, nor can any be used
to express something not about the speaker. To do so would be to make
an assertion which might be wrong, and UI are not the way to do that.
We do, however, have bridi that can express exactly what you're trying
to do with UI here; instead of ".uidai" you would say "do gleki,"
which means approximately the same thing about your perception of the
listener's mental state (and contains no indication of your own,
unless you made it ".ui do gleki" or "mi'o gleki"), exactly as you're
hoping for. Crucially, it also gives the listener the option to
respond with "na go'i" if you're mistaken.

English "Ouch" works the same way, in that I can't say "*No, you don't
actually ouch at all." I can believe you're just faking your pain, and
dispute the *implied* assertion, but there is no direct assertion of
ouchness with which I can disagree.

".ui" is an entirely different kind of utterance from "mi gleki," and
the two types ought not be used to substitute for one another. If I
want to talk about your feelings, as opposed to my feelings which may
or may not relate to you, then I need bridi.

 - mi'e .kreig.daniyl.

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